Do We Really Care? Pt. 2

I'm curious
Because to show mercy once in a blue moon
Only makes the unforgiving more furious
As if kindness and grace were ethereal, rare gifts
In the realm of the luxurious
As if there was something hard and remote
At the core of the human nucleus
Despite compassion and tenderness
Making the darkest of souls almost perfectly luminous
I've sensed some creature not far from the surface
Cold-blooded, imperious
With a heart like a cannonball lost in an ocean trench
Stony, impervious
Or lodestone lodged in the brain and locked on a bad star
That brings out the worst in us
Look at me, God's gift to graffiti, spell-checking, injurious
Look at you, joy-riding the soft-top hearse
All the way to the terminus
Here we go, planting our poppies then torching the forest
Carelessly serious
Meanwhile, we're crowding the brink of the lip of the cusp
Of the ring of the next Vesuvius
Trying to flag down a passing planet or mothership
Failing to lip-read the universe